


Of Blood Divided

by CourierNinetyTwo



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 09:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15240615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNinetyTwo/pseuds/CourierNinetyTwo
Summary: Greed remembers his sister Lust, and wishes he could bring her back.





	Of Blood Divided

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Idle Fancies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/324613) by [ehmazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing). 



> Thank you to @ehmazing for letting me remix your fic!

Lust was his sister. A lot of people had forgotten that.

He had forgotten it too, for a while. Memories came back in bits and pieces after Bido, stitching themselves back together in a thousand dark threads. In a moment of pain, Greed wondered why he out of anyone had been given a second chance. Gluttony was regrown too, the hungry fool, but Lust was left shattered, her beauty cast into dust and ash. Couldn't Father have made her again? Couldn't he have _tried_?

It was another reason to hate him, to take everything Father ever wanted and make it his own. With that godly truth in his hands, Greed could bring Lust back again; they could be part of a family that ruled the world. They could be different--they could be better.

He reached up to the collar of his shirt, tight and narrow. Greed wanted his old jacket back, with the fur that cradled his shoulders, the one that had been dyed copper, sticky red after a slaughter with Lust by his side. The blade of her fingers had sliced it clean as a newly shorn lamb, short but pure again. It had been then, in that instant, that he wanted to tell her to come with him, to give up on Father's ambitions and slake their own desires instead.

 _Lust_ wasn't that far from _greed_ , anyway. They coveted, sinned, craved. She didn't discriminate, and he hadn't either; he wanted everything. Avidity could become avarice with a push in the right direction, and the two of them could have plundered the world together. He should have asked her to leave Father, said he would be in charge instead, if she needed someone's orders to follow that badly.

"You loved her, huh?" Ling's voice rang in the back of his skull, almost chipper over a chorus of screaming souls.

"Don't be ridiculous," Greed snapped back. "Even if I had that useless human quirk, I'd keep it all to myself."

Ling hummed, with the same idle amusement as a master swordsman asked to cut through a paper target. "Right. Because you'd be afraid she wouldn't love you back."

He couldn't crush Ling inside his own skull, but the thought of doing so was at least somewhat satisfying. "Lust understood loyalty, okay? That's what I'm talking about. She could have been loyal to me. I would have kept her away from him until it was time to strike."

"That would have satisfied you?" Ling chuckled. "That's a surprise."

It wouldn't have. Greed couldn't stop Lust from her hungers any more than she could halt his, and if they had been fighting side by side, she'd want to cut a stripe out of Father. Those claws would split the cradle of his chest open, offering up the prizes inside for the taking, and they could feast side by side. He wanted the lion's share, of course, but he'd never let Lust go without. Maybe she would fight him for it, maybe they would tear each other apart, but at least Father wouldn't be the one to win--

Greed's jaw tightened, almost enough to crack his teeth. It was all idle fantasy; Lust was dead, his friends were dead, and with the way things were starting to look, he was going to die a second time. Would his memories live on? He'd heard humans talk about an afterlife before, some kind of paradise, but what real paradise would it be if everyone was on the same level? But if he got to see her again, then maybe...

"Hmm," Ling interrupted, "Seems like you have some mourning to sort out there, Greed."

"What good would that do me?" It was meant to be biting sarcasm, but came out empty. "I might as well be eating shadows."

He knew mourning. Greed heard it in hundreds of thousands of souls, screaming until there was nothing left but a sense of loss, a void that cut through memory itself. They knew only that something had been taken, something that would never return, without their own names or futures to cling to. Fuel for the fire, fodder that built the steps from which he would rise.

Remembering Lust's name wasn't enough. No, he had to prove himself above all the other Homunculi, show he was better than the ones that pressed on even in the wake of Father's forgetfulness. Gluttony might have cried for her, but he still served faithfully, unable to think past anything but starvation. Greed had his own instincts, sure, but he could lock them away for a while if need be.

After his first life, anyway. Ling's presence, however frustrating a bargain, made it easier to separate himself from, well, _himself_. Greed remembered the way Wrath looked at him after he attacked, calling him foolish for being unable to cast the past aside. In a way, he wanted to; it would have been so much easier for those memories to be wiped clean, but he wouldn't be Greed without desire; he'd be a puppet walking on someone else's strings.

"I'm surprised you haven't tried to get revenge," Ling murmured in the back of his mind.

"I did," Greed protested. "I wanted Wrath ripped into a thousand pieces."

"That's not who I meant." There was a beat of silence, as if Ling wasn't sure about what he wanted to say next. "Mustang is the one who killed Lust."

Ling was right. Greed waited for the righteous anger to rise in his chest at the alchemist that had taken Lust from him, but it didn't come. Something in him twisted instead, low in his gut like a serpent. He remembered it from killing Bido: _guilt_.

"If I had gotten her away from Father first, she wouldn't have died to Mustang," Greed said, and the truth hurt more than having his head smashed in. A skull was an easy fix; his mistakes weren't. "I know why he killed her. He stole from me, but we stole everything from him. That was the plan, anyway."

He remembered the night he and Lust walked home together after that newly ignited massacre, the cleaved collar of his coat hanging around his shoulders. They had laughed about the chaos caused, eager to see more, to take the next step. Lust's laugh was like smoke, coiling around Greed and pressing into his lungs. When she brought up Father's reward again, he amused her even more by coming up with the most ridiculous demands possible. He wanted countries, castles, for there to be a statue of him placed at the mile marker of every road.

In that distant, blood-drenched moment, Greed had been happy.

Rage seared through him. He would never have that again, _could_ never have that again with Lust by his side. It burned and burned, but what came out of Greed's eyes was wet and heavy with salt, tears that cut damp trails down his face.

A hand, not quite his own, rose to wipe them away. Ling hadn't said a word, but he had taken control just long enough to offer comfort. For a second, Greed thought he was crumbling to pieces, every inch of his body splitting at the seams.

He came back together, bit by bit; there wasn't any other choice. If they were to tear Father off his pedestal, Greed knew he couldn't be caught weeping in a corner. Lust would have chided him for it too, told him to seize what he wanted if it was such a dire need.

If there was anything he could do now, it was listening to that voice.

She would be with him in the end--Greed was sure of it.  
  



End file.
